Innocence
by annicaspoon
Summary: She plants her feet into the sand, and drags to a stop. "Come on, Wally," she sighs, glancing up at me. "Just be a kid again." Post Failsafe fluff. Cause we need some.


**Oh look! Another after Failsafe fic! Sorry if you're sick of seeing this guys, but the bunny hit and I had to write it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice, or any swings, unfortunately :(**

oOo

Why is it, that when you feel the most exhausted, physically and mentally, that's when it's almost impossible to actually sleep? I've been lying in this bed for hours, wide awake, and the closest to sleep I've gotten is a five minute nap that gave me nothing but more images of alien invasions.

Yeah, thanks. Just what I needed.

I roll over and push myself off the bed. It probably would be easier to sleep in my own bed at home, or at Uncle Barry's house, but we had all figured we needed to stay at the cave with each other after what happened earlier today.

Or yesterday, now that I look at the clock. 2:23 am. Time for food.

I shuffle to the kitchen. As I pass Robin's room, I glance inside, noting his empty bed. Not that I'm surprised. I don't think he ever sleeps. The next door I pass is Kaldur's room. It's closed, which is unusual, because we all tend to leave them open, even when we're asleep, and that often goes doubly for Kaldur.

I almost trip over my feet as I walk out of the hall to see Artemis sitting on the couch, in the dark. Apart from Robin being god-knows-where, I thought I'd be the only one awake. Though, obviously, I'm not.

She's sitting on one end of the couch with her legs curled underneath her and her jacket draped over the front of her shoulders. It's one of the few times I've seen her with her hair loose, and the changing light of the TV reflects weirdly off her hair and face. Her eyes are puffy from tiredness and she looks cold and pale.

But she's _alive_.

She glances up at me as I walk in, but almost immediately turns back to face the TV. As I walk past the couch to the kitchen her voice pipes up, soft and croaky from disuse.

"Can't sleep?" It's the first thing she has said to me or anyone that isn't 'I'm fine' or 'quit worrying' since we've all come out of the training exercise.

"Hungry," I mumble, "you?"

"Megan's still crying."

We stop there.

I grab a banana and start peeling it while Artemis focuses on flipping television channels. Different images flash across the screen, while I lean over the counter and eat. Late night news, a documentary about the Spanish Inquisition, European porn.

A sci-fi movie centred around an alien invasion.

The TV is turned off before I can react, and I continue to stare at a blank screen. The sound of Artemis dropping the remote on the ground drags my attention to her, and we meet eyes for a moment before quickly looking away. While I stare at the ground, I hear her sigh and stand up from the couch.

"I'm going for a walk," she whispers.

"I'll come."

She turns around and looks at me, the hint of a wry smile on her face. Just the reminder of her usual snark brings a sense of normality back to everything. "You might want to put a shirt on," she says, pulling on her jacket, "and some shoes."

Wait, I'm not wearing a shirt?

My face warms as I look down and realize that I am, indeed, standing shirtless in front of Artemis.

But why the hell does that embarrass me?

I run to my room, get dressed and run back while Artemis has only enough time to bend over to pull a pair of sneakers on. She rolls her eyes at me and I follow her out of the cave.

It's cool outside, and despite my faster than normal bloodflow and metabolism keeping my core temperature above the normal, the strong coastal wind is still enough to make me regret only pulling a light t-shirt on, and I also notice Artemis pulling her jacket around her tighter.

I have no idea where we're going, and Artemis isn't in a telling mood, so I just silently follow her along the beach towards the main town of Happy Harbor. We climb over rocks and stray branches from the foliage snag on our clothes. I keep my eyes on Artemis the entire time, comparing her now, striding purposefully and strong through the thick vegetation, to when we were on the ice, scared and exposed, disappearing underneath the orange beam of the aliens' weapons.

"Can you please stop thinking about it?"

I snap out of my daze to give her a confused look. "Thinking about what?"

She roughly pushes past a tree branch. "You know exactly what I'm talking about Wally. I don't need to be a telepath to figure out that you're still thinking about the training exercise." She turns around and glares at me, a lock of pale hair falling over her shoulder. "It wasn't real, okay? None of it really happened. We're all fine. Just forget about it already."

She doesn't get it. She just doesn't get it. "That's easy for you to say," I bite back, "You got off easy. You didn't have to watch one of us die, right in front of you, did you?" I know I'm being unfair, but I can't help the fact that I was scared _shitless_. I was terrified and pissed off and devastated, but she doesn't know _any_ of that, and hopefully she never will.

She looks surprised at my outburst, but quickly shrugs it off. "It wasn't real." For a second I don't know whether she's trying to convince me, herself or both of us, because she sure as hell doesn't look like she believes it. "It. Wasn't. Real."

"And what happens when it is? What happens next time, when you or anyone else dies for real?" I'm yelling now, but I don't care. She's acting so calm and blasé towards this whole thing and it's pissing me off.

This isn't one of those "you almost died" moments; she _did_ die, and I-we all saw it. But she's acting like nothing has happened, like it was just a normal training session with no consequences.

God I hate her. I hate her so much.

"There's not going to be a next time, Wally," she brings her face up to mine and looks me in the eye. "I'm not going to die. None of us are."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

I snort. "Really? And how the hell, are you so sure about that?"

"Because I'll never let it happen."

It's such a childish thought, and I almost laugh at her in spite of the whole situation. "So what? You think that no matter what, you're going to be able to stop yourself from dying, purely because you refuse to?"

"Yeah, so? Is that so hard to believe?" She holds my gaze a few moments before turning back around and once again walking towards Happy Harbor, more roughly than she was before.

My annoyance and curiosity finally gets the better of me. "Where are we going?" I semi-yell, close behind her.

She doesn't turn around. "There's a park nearby," she mutters, "I want to go on the swings."

Artemis? Swings?

"So what? You have an NDE and suddenly it's important to act like a kid and have fun?" We're approaching the end of the beach, and there actually is a park about 50 meters away from us, one I haven't noticed before.

"For your information, Wallace," she glances over at me and narrows her eyes, "I've always like going on swings." As we step into the sandpit surrounding the park, she immediately seats herself one of the swings and pushes off.

I watch her, leaning against one of the poles, as she swings back and forth, getting higher and higher at each end. Her hair twists and tangles around her face as it is also blown back and forth.

It's actually kind of relaxing, watching her go up and down, or maybe I'm just really tired. I'm not mad at her anymore, though I don't know whether I was really mad at her in the first place.

The chains start to squeak as she gets higher. "Are you going on or what?" She says, flying past as a streak of yellow hair. I glance at the other swing, but don't move, which she obviously notices. She plants her feet into the sand, and drags to a stop. "Come on, Wally," she sighs, glancing up at me. "Just be a kid again."

A grin begins to tug at my face. I walk up to her and clutch onto one of the chains of her swing. "You know what my favourite thing to do on the swings used to be?" I grab the other chain. "This." I begin to spin her around, a grin emerging on my face. I continue to spin her, twisting the chains as far as possible, before sending her a quick grin and letting her go, gripping on tight and laughing.

I jump on the other swing and spin myself, and the in next few minutes, that's all we do. Spin, laugh and generally act half our age. We're loud enough that we're probably waking up everyone in the houses nearby, but neither of us care.

Eventually Artemis stops, leaning forward and giggling. "Okay, I think I'm about to throw up," she says breathlessly, as I stop spinning myself. I let the swing continue to push me back and forth slightly I and look up at the sky, trying to pinpoint certain constellations.

There's a rattle from Artemis' swing and I look over towards her. She's leaning towards me, resting her cheek against the chain with her eyes closed and a content expression on her face. "My sister used to always take me to parks in the middle of the night," she murmurs. "Sometimes, we'd get up so high on the swings that it felt like we'd never come down."

I frown in her direction, confusion whirling in my head. "You have a sister?" I pretend not to notice how her whole body instantly tenses up.

Her eyes snap open and the expression of being completely caught out crosses her face. "Um, yeah," she meets my eyes. "But she's older, she moved out ages ago," she hastily adds.

I know there's more to it, but I don't press on it. "Huh. I always figured you to be the only child type."

She doesn't reply.

We let the silence stretch on, until my curiosity once again gets the better of me. "Hey Artemis," I whisper.

"Hmm?"

"Were you scared? When it happened?" I don't elaborate, because right now there's only one "it" and I know she knows what I'm talking about.

She sighs and digs a hole in the sand with her toe. "Not really," she murmurs, "I don't think I really knew what was going on. You were though, weren't you?"

I think back to the mothership exploding, hearing the first few crashes while trying to fight off the few aliens that had surrounded me and Robin, knowing for sure that we were both going to die, and just accepting it. "I was at first," I mutter, "but after a while I forgot about it." I shrug, no adding that it was because I was too busy believing I could save her.

We both go quiet again, until Artemis shifts on her swing.

"Want to go back?" she whispers, looking at me.

My stomach grumbles and I frown. "Do you reckon there's a food store open around here?"

She snorts. "I doubt it."

"Well then," I jump up from the swing and hold my hand out to Artemis with an exaggerated flourish. "Shall we?" She rolls her eyes at me, but she's smiling and she takes my hand anyway. I pull her off the sing and we begin to walk back to the cave.

We're almost up to the beach when I realize we're still holding hands, but I don't say anything. Her hand is cool and soft in mine.

And I don't really want to let go of it just yet.


End file.
